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No, not the many pensioners who have to decide if they can afford to feed themselves or to turn on the heat this winter, but the Queen and the His Royal Bluntness the Duke of Edinburgh, as Buckingham Palace is to have some £369 million pounds spent on refurbishment. Given we have endured years of austerity cuts in public services across the board and are in a country where some are homeless, others, despite full time work, teeter on the edge of homelessness because so much of their pay goes to soaring rents from gouging landlords (including a number of our MPs who make a good income from renting properties out and, coincidentally, get to set the laws on how that area is regulated), the chances for many to now every dream of owning their own home is gone, how exactly is this to be sold to the nation? A Buck Palace spokesperson said they hoped it would “appeal to their sense of nationhood.”

Really? People are working god knows how many hours a week and they still can barely put a basic roof over their heads because most of their income goes on rent, and this idiot talks about “sense of nationhood”? Well a sense of nationhood goes both ways – why the feck doesn’t Buck Palace show some of that sense back to the rest of the community who are struggling to stay in a home, heat that home, feed their families? If the government can grant millions to this incredibly ugly building that needs so much work because it has been so badly mis-managed over the decades then they have no bloody grounds to then tell the rest of us that sorry, we only have so much money in the pot, we must cut out suit to our cloth, and all the other excuses put forward to excuse cuts which usually affect the worst off disproportionately (to say nothing of being happy to spend billions on new nuclear missile subs or a high speed rail link).

Here’s an idea to fund the repairs without raiding an already badly depleted public purse to pay for dwelling for super-rich royalty – put in lots of cameras, all through Buck Palace, live streamed to the web, a 24 hour a day reality show. Given the (to me anyway, inexplicable) popularity of that sort of viewing they could more than earn the money to fix up the crumbling eyesore that is the palace (a building so hideous Londoners voted it one of the ugliest in the city)

The Forth Road Bridge, an enormous suspension bridge which crosses the Firth of Forth, linking Fife to Edinburgh and central Scotland, has been closed due to a structural defect and will remain so while engineers work on the problem, entailing enormous traffic problems for a huge part of Scotland. Or at least, that’s what the authorities are telling us, but some cutting edge investigative journalism by the Woolamaloo Gazette (ie, we made it up) can now reveal the terrifying truth – this damage was not an engineering problem, a structural fault or even work of terrorist saboteurs. No, even more horrifying this was the direct result of a kaiju attack.

Godzilla, on his way to pay a festive visit to his Great Aunt Nessie, took the wrong Firth on his trip, ran into bridge and caused the damage before realising he should be a bit further north and sliding back under the cold, tidal waters of the vast firth. A spokemonster for Godzilla reported that it was more of an accident than attack, and that Godzilla was “highly embarrassed” by the mistake, which was put down to a faulty bit of GPS programming.

Apologies for the reflections, normally put lens close up to glass to avoid reflections when shooting through a window, but no way to do that in this instance and still fit all of them in. As ever click on the pic to check larger versions on the Woolamaloo Flickr

Oh but this is just priceless – a mock documentary, filmed much like one of the BBC’s Neil Oliver Scottish history programmes, “Jim Murphy, Saviour of the Union” gleefully shows the hypocritical, self-serving stance of the Scottish Labour party in the Independence Referendum and how their cosying up with the tories (yes, Milliband, we haven’t forgotten you leaping to agree with a tory chancellor) has come back post referendum to bite them, with polls terrifying Labour that they may lose a large number of formerly safe Scottish seats in the election, such is their unpopularity in Scotland now (the irony being the Labour leadership in London was most worried about Independence not on some patriotic grounds but because they couldn’t afford to lose that large block of seats they normally won in Scotland for Westmonster, now they may well lose many anyway), using some cleverly photoshopped famous Scottish paintings to illustrate it. (via Bella Caledonia)

After being condemned for playing the political blame-game over the disastrous flooding in southern England government minister Eric Pickles reveals he is to be placed into a very large hessian sack and his substantial frame will be used to help plug holes in the crumbling, breached flood defences.

… the witch is dead… Hey, right wingers hell-bent on canonising Thatcher as some modern political saint, protesters will stop buying Ding Dong the Witch is Dead to get it into the charts if you stop wasting millions of pounds of the tax-payer’s money on what is essentially a state funeral in all but name. Deal? No? Well if you can close down half of central London and waste millions on a politician who is still despised by half the population decades on then it is fine for people to protest in a witty and sarcastic manner by getting this song to the charts. In fact there is something delightfully, subversively British about the humour behind that, the sort of satire and humour which goes back to the days of Hogarth as a way for ordinary citizens to make their views on their ‘betters’ known and heard.

And on the related note of Hogarth, here’s a recent work from one of that esteemed artist and observer of society’s modern heirs, the excellent Martin Rowson on the whole nonsense surrounding Thatcher’s death (cartoon by and (c) Martin Rowson, published in the Guardian):

I’ve head the pleasure of hearing Martin speak twice now at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and he’s not only very knowledgeable about the history of editorial cartooning and illustration, he is passionate about using it to hold politicians and other public figures to account and letting them know we are watching the buggers, which is vital in any healthy democratic society.

(Martin Rowson at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2012, pic from my Flickr)

Many nursery rhymes have been passed down for generations, but in our modern, wired-up, interconnected age where youngsters are more savvy to trends and tech than ever, perhaps many of them are losing their relevance to contemporary children, so we need to modernise them a little:

Pat a cake, pat a cake, baker man, bake me a low-fat, high fibre muffin, as fast as you can (and a skinny latte to go with it, please)

Little Jack Horner, sat in his corner, thinking when I grow up I will be a famous paleontologist

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, then called Injury Lawyers For You and sued someone to cover his own clumsiness

Mary had a little lamb, it used to send out her email spam

Old Mother Hubbard, went to the cupboard, then decided it was more convenient to order her grocery shopping online

There was an old lady, who lived in a shoe, because the mean bailed-out bankers wouldn’t give her a mortgage

Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, his high-fat sedentary lifestyle made him die

Jack and Jill went up the hill, as part of their daily cardiovascular exercise programme (didn’t want to end up like Georgie)

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, which she had assembled herself from an Ikea flatpack using an Allen key

This isn’t just any half a pound of tuppenny rice and half a pound of treacle, this is M&S tuppenny rice and treacle

I’ve flagged up Carr and Kumar’s clever webcomic Hipster Hitler on here before; I first came across it online a couple of years back and then, as many of you will doubtless know, it appeared in the comics pages that the fine Stool Pigeon includes. Humour, of course, is a very subjective taste – when Richard covered the Stool Pigeon strips this was one that didn’t so much appeal for him, for instance, while I was consistently cracked up by it, so obviously I was pretty happy to get my hands on this collected print volume of the strips.

As you may infer from the title the main idea for this satirical take on the Nazi Fuhrer is conflating one of the 20th century’s most evil dictators with the poseur douche figure of the self-obsessed, style over substance (but pretending to be all substance) hipster figure. And while that does offer up a good comedy image, it’s not quite enough to sustain it by itself for strip after strip, and it’s to Carr and Kumar’s credit that they don’t rely on that idea exclusively; it forms the basis, the format for the series, but there are clever little tricks all the way through, most notably the very changing T-shirts Hitler sports throughout (often very funny if you know your history to get the references – one T proclaims “Triumph of the Chill”, another has “1941: a Race Odyssey”, “Weimar Guitar Gently Weeps”) and the little text introduction at the top of each strip, which manage to combine a bit of actual history with the comedy, one strip on his virulent anti-Semitism starting with the introduction noting how Hitler “blamed the Jews for Germany having lost World War I and further accused them of degenerating the arts, trying to take over the world and causing the breakup of the Smiths.”

The collected edition is arranged chronologically, sampling the webcomic’s run in historical order, from Hitler’s early life, leaving his rural Austrian home (he is too poor to afford stylishly distressed clothing, he explains to his family) to try his luck in Vienna, before joining up in the German army for the First World War (this allows for some good lines about his changing his moustache style and a nice M*A*S*H* reference when he’s wounded and taken to a military hospital), the inter-war years, and then Hitler in power and the Second World War. The art is pretty simple and clear, rarely bothering with much in the way of background detail, but combined with some clever wordplay it’s pretty effective.

I found something to giggle about throughout all the sections, and more than a few that had me guffawing, and the duo make good use of the real, historical Hitler’s (and a number of other leading Nazis’) penchant for superstition (he consults a fortune reader and is horrified to find she predicts a later dictator who will come after him and who will appropriate his moustache – cue a good dig at barking Bob Mugabe) and his well documented eccentric behaviour (which none of those around him dared to question) in real life here is pastiched perfectly as being because of his hipster values and lifestyle (he tells Goering they will have air superiority for the planned invasion of Britain, but he means he will ground the Luftwaffe to reduce their carbon footprint and pollution, thus ensuring their air is ‘superior’, he likes the idea of a tripartite pact between him, Italy and Japan because it makes “a perfec triangle. Silly, but no sillier than some of the other beliefs of the real Nazi heirarchy). The rest of his rogues’ gallery of henchmen (and women – Leni Reifensthal and Eva get a look in too) are present – Goebbels, Goering, Himmler et al) and we also get a nice line in who’s the coolest dictator between Hipster Hitler and his one-time friend, a very party-on Stalin.

I’m sure some will object and claim this is bad taste, but I can’t agree with that at all. I probably came well primed to appreciate this – it’s a period of history I know well, and I was also geared to comedy lampooning of the characters and events of that period, as the late, great Spike Milligan’s war memoirs (beginning with the brilliantly titles Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall), read way back in my teens, had me well prepared. Personally I don’t find this in bad taste, nor do I think it cheapens or lightens awful events and indeed hideous crimes against humanity, it does instead what good cartooning often does, takes the very serious and lampoons it mercilessly, along the way taking a vile real character and reducing them to utter ridicule, and that’s something satirists were doing actually during the war itself to bolster morale (and even before the war – consider Chaplain’s remarkable The Great Dictator) and afterwards – again think of British comedy genius Milligan (who noted in one volume of his war memoirs that he was convinced our sense of humour about it all was a major part of why we eventually won, it kept us going) or the great Mel Brooks who has delighted in any chance in his comedy career to ridicule the Third Reich. Hipster Hitler does what any good satire does, it takes some of the real aspects of the events and characters, then gleefully distorts them to ridiculous levels for comedy gold. And along the way it takes a vile, hideous dictator and mass murderer and through cartooning and comedy exposes the pathetic little man he actually was, inviting us all to laugh at him.

Government, supermarkets and other buyers and representatives of dairy farmers are still negotiating over the scandal of large companies like supermarkets paying such a low price to farmers for milk supplies that they make a loss on every pint. The large supermarkets, who are often the target of ire for using their bulk buying and selling power to bully suppliers like farmers into ridiculously low prices have retaliated however and explained the very low price of milk is not because of supermarkets rigging prices through buying power but caused directly by online milk piracy. In this they have been backed up by figures from the music and film industry who say that alongside music and movie piracy the illegal downloading of copied milk via web pirates was costing farmers dearly and destroying the industry. It’s thought when they attempt to lobby yet again for draconian new internet piracy laws the dairy farmers will also be leaning on politicians to bring in penalties such as the ‘three strikes’ rule for anyone suspected of illegally downloading milk or any other dairy products.

(a dairy cow yesterday, she answered no comment to the Woolamaloo Gazette’s reporter when asked about milk piracy)

Hovis the well known UK bakers has announced a new business plan they say will help alleviate both the awful current youth unemployment statistics and benefit the environment at the same time, with a side bonus of increasing the fitness of the nation. They are to scrap their fleet of large lorries spewing out diesel across the land as they cross the whole of the UK to deliver yummy fresh bread to stores and reinstate their classic young lad on a bike local delivery system, which was made famous by Sir Ridley Scott back in his advertising days. This will, the company says, reduce carbon emissions, fuel consumption and lead to a mini boom for bicycle manufacturers and new opportunities for unemployed youth to be gainfully employed and to get fit while providing a service to the community. There is a down side – in the Olde Days many children were pushed to such levels of physical exhaustion cycling their bread deliveries up incredibly steep hills they died of extreme fatigue.

This wasn’t a huge problem back then as the streets of Britain then abounded with cheeky, chirpy orphaned ragamuffin urchins who could be used to replace existing cycle delivery lads as they dropped out. It could be a more of a problem today, but with youth suffering most of all from unemployment in the double dip recession it is thought there will still be more applying than there are cycle available to use, and Liam Fox is already consulting with the government on re-writing employment protection laws for under 25s so it is once more legal to run urchins until they drop, as we did in the glory days of the Rule Britannia Empire (cheers, waves flag, salutes picture of Queen Victoria paddling at Brighton while wearing an “I heart General Gordon” t-shirt) – as some Tory MPs have pointed out, when it was legal to work children to death and whip any who complained of conditions Britain ruled a global empire and was king of industry and world commerce, so perhaps we need to get back to those old-fashioned values.